Yes! In fact, I was running LMDE 5 (Linux Mint Debian Edition), which is based on Debian 11, but I upgraded the Debian base to 12. And switched from Cinnamon to XFCE.
@bellgamin there are Live install images found here that you can burn to usb and boot from to a live environment to test drive without committing to h/disk. Just scroll down to choose your desktop flavour and burn it to a USB stick using something like Rufus or Balena etcher. I used Balena etcher to burn amd64-kde, no issues and booted from it. It supports UEFI/Secureboot which is nice.
Debian in only distro that does not reconize my wifi, while other Debian based distros does. Oh well...
If this is caused by missing proprietary firmware by earlier versions, Debian 12 will work out of box. As for the topic: great! I will upgrade next week.
The developer of Spiral Linux should post the new version in several weeks. But its designed to be updated with the official Debian repositories, taking care of the developer hit by the bus concern.
Apart from the obvious step up for someone like me who prefers KDE, I’ve found Debian 12 to be totally underwhelming. It’s jittery in use on my Dell hardware and sluggish too. Maybe when the likes of Q4, MX, Neptune and possibly Titan release their final versions the result might be better. Long term I’ve had better success with two independent distros rather than anything based on either Debian or Ubuntu. KaOS is one but my current business machines are both running openmamba. The initial updates and chosen software mix is slow after the initial install but you only have to do this once. At one time openmamba was not the best for user friendly but the last two versions have been outstanding. Certainly the best KDE experience for me to date.
Running Debian Bookworm KDE Plasma 5.27.5, triple boot setup alongside MX-21 and Windows 11 for three days now. It's running okay, but like you, I'm also underwhelmed by it. Amongst a number of issues and hurdles I've encountered beginning with the installation and all the system tailoring and setup with it, most of them eventually resolved, the worst is that every Flatpak browser I've installed crashes mere seconds after they are launched, I wanted to replace the default Firefox-ESR, and finally I was able to do so with the Snap release. Btw, I find MX-21 to be superior to this Debian release. I can't understand all the hype surrounding Debian 12 on YT reviews, but I suppose I should know better than to place too much stock in them. To me this release is overrated.
KDE in Debian is a second-class citizen unfortunately. Main reason why I don't use KDE. YouTube is about hype for the last couple of years. Period.
How is that? It is the latest version 5.27.5. YT isn't completely all that bad. There are some excellent how-to videos, for example, that have helped me immensely to fix minor dishwasher and furnace issues in recent memory Of course it's important to hunt around for the right videos. Until now, I could only find reviews on YT. Just read the summary of the Distrowatch Bookworm review I saw minutes ago. They were not all that impressed with it.
Hey Everyone, unable to explain why, but this distro is growing on me by the day. Maybe because it is so stable and responsive, and it required me to put in considerable time and effort to get it from its very spartan, bare basic installation to a more feature-rich environment that more closely suits my needs and liking as a daily driver. It's been a most rewarding and satisfying experience working from the initial installation struggles, trying to encrypt the root partition, resolving the missing repository links, to getting all the system modifications and applications in place and installed. Clearly there is greater satisfaction and reward when time and effort is required, rather than the distro doing everything for you.
After balancing the pros and cons of this release, I've decided that MX-21 is a superior release, and have gone back to using it full time again. I will most likely remove Debian Bookworm and try something else. I do like the fact that Debian supports UEFI Secure boot, though, so I don't need to use the grub rescue menu from my live usb to boot to MX. That advantage will hold me back for a little while until I figure out what I want to do next.
I have been using Debian 12 for about 2 weeks before it went stable. I find no issues on my machines and I am running Cinnamon. The new "firmware repo" where you auto add the needed firmware (someone above mentioned having trouble) took care of everything for my stuff. I am running wifi 6 and it found my NIC out of the box!
